This past weekend had some action on the field. Fabian Johnson scored his first goal with Borussia Mönchengladbach. Aron Johannsson and Tim Ream both returned from their injuries. Roderick has you covered with everyone in The OT Report.

The US U-17 team began play at the 2015 CONCACAF U-17 Championship with a 5-0 win over Cuba on Friday (highlights) followed with a 2-0 win over Trinidad & Tobago yesterday (highlights). Joe Gallardo (four goals) and Christian Pulisic have been the US’s two best players in my non-expert opinion so far.

According to one report out of Germany, Jurgen Klinsmann might call up Ashton Götz for the US friendlies and camp this month even though he doesn’t have his US passport yet (he wouldn’t be able to play in the games but he could train with the team).

It looks like Freddy Adu could be headed to Sweden to sign with a real team according to Ives Galarcep. If true, this would be his 11th different team in his eighth different country since becoming a pro in 2004. Over that same time, I have lived in two different apartments and have had the same job.

Continuing with the rumors, this report claims Fabian Johnson has been scouted recently by Barcelona as he is one of a few players on their list of potential fullbacks since Dani Alves’ contract ends this summer.

Barcelona youngster Ben Lederman is currently in playing purgatory as part of the team’s injunction that retroactively disqualified many academy players. Some guys just got cleared to play again but not Lederman.

And also thanks to Josh Deaver, I am now aware of a second American at Barcelona. Konrad de la Fuente is a U-14 forward and he scored a goal back in early February for Barca’s Infantil A.

Camp begins January 12 and we should see a roster in the next few days. Jurgen Klinsmann/US Soccer released a video earlier this week to various members of the press where he explained that 2015 will focus a lot of attention on the youth teams, especially the U-23 Olympic team.

“The main task for 2015 is definitely the Olympic team, the U-23 team, to get that off the ground. To identify players, get camps on the agenda, get games on the agenda for that team, and help them to kind of build a core group towards the qualifiers. We want to make sure that what happened with London 2012 is not happening again. We put this on a higher priority level and I think that’s exciting.”

Tab Ramos selected his 20-man roster for the 2015 CONCACAF U-20 Championship on Monday. While Ben Spencer is on the roster, apparently CONCACAF’s website had Joel Sonora’s name on the roster at first. It looks like Sonora originally made the team, but was pulled off due to an injury.

With 2014 ending, we have closed off our 2014 goal tracker. Jann George led the way with 20 goals across all competitions in the calendar year. I have already setup the 2015 page as Jon-Paul Pittman scored a goal on January 1 while we were too busy watching the Big Ten beat up on the SEC West.

And finally, we can blame Alex Olshansky for bringing this to my attention, but here is the weird BBC intro for the US/Portugal match from last summer’s World Cup. You can tell even Gary Lineker thought it was odd at the end of the video.

A bunch of stuff from this week and other stuff from last week that I meant to post but didn’t, so let’s get after it.

Yesterday was a good day for Americans in Europe. John Brooks continued his recent strong play by scoring his first goal since THAT goal against Ghana (highlights from yesterday). Over in Belgium, Sacha Kljestan came off the bench and scored a goal in Anderlecht’s 3-0 win in the Belgian Cup (highlights). Also in the Belgian Cup, Kenny Saief scored for Gent in their 4-1 win (no highlights found yet). And back in Germany, Alfredo Morales was credited with an assist in Ingolstadt’s 2-1 win, but his teammate did most of the dirty work (highlights).

Howie posted some links about Brek Shea heading back to the US and Orlando City, but Greg Seltzer is hearing that some other Championship teams might be still interested in his services.

Herculez Gomez is headed back to Puebla. This will be his seventh different stint with a Liga MX team in the last five seasons, but he would be returning to his original stint/team where he won his scoring title in 2010.

Ventura Alvarado and Club America won the Apertura title this past fall so here are two interviews for you, one in English and one in Spanish.

Dom Dwyer signed a new contract with Sporting Kansas City which will keep him in the US for a while longer. Since he received his green card in 2012, he would be eligible to apply for citizenship in 2017.

Haven’t done some links in a while, but here are a bunch of random stuff from recently or two weeks ago (or sometime in the last little bit). Hopefully my workload will ease up after this week and I could do these more often again.

The rumored USMNT friendly against Croatia at Craven Cottage for November (that their federation announced) looks to be no mas. That said, US Soccer looks to be talking to Colombia about filling that void and still playing at Craven Cottage. But if you remember, Colombia was the team that US Soccer tried to schedule for September for the second friendly and that fell through. Basically nothing is official until US Soccer announces something.

This was the weekend of players returning to the field. Geoff Cameron came off the bench and played 29 minutes (completing 15-of-15 passes) in Stoke City’s 2-1 win over Swansea City. Stoke City’s website got a couple post-game quotes from Cameron.

Terrence Boyd made his return this weekend, coming off the bench and playing 29 minutes in RB Leipzig’s 1-0 loss to Nurnberg. Here is a photo of Boyd in action.

Aron Johannsson played in his first game since the World Cup. It was with AZ Alkmaar’s reserve team on Monday, but he scored from the penalty spot (highlights).

While he didn’t come back from injury, John Brooks appears to be out of the dog house as he came off the bench for Hertha Berlin in a 2-0 loss to Schalke.

And while we had those players coming back, we did have a couple Americans pick up injuries this weekend.

In the battle of American goalkeepers, Tim Howard (photo) and Everton defeated Brad Guzan (photo) and Aston Villa. It was Howard’s 350th career Premier League appearance, trailing only Brad Friedel (450) for the most all-time by an American.

The US is now unbeaten in its last 19 home games after Tuesday’s draw to Honduras. Here are the highlights and here are some photos. And I found this stat to be interesting from Matthew Doyle about Michael Bradley playing behind two true forwards.

While Brad Guzan and Nick Rimando seem to have the #1/#2 spots locked up over the next year, Will took a look at the depth behind them and gave some other options aside from Bill Hamid and Sean Johnson. He also went USMNT hipster on us and gave us some other options at the U-23 level.

While Joe Gyau is out until January with his meniscus injury, Schwatzgelb.com takes a look closer at Gyau’s career.

Julian Green and Fabian Johnson are both back at their respective German clubs and training again despite their recent injuries.

Joe Gyau made his first team debut with Borussia Dortmund on Wednesday. He came off the bench and played the last 16 minutes. Here are some highlights and an every touch video of his performance. As for that hugging photo with Jurgen Klopp, that came right after Dortmund scored their first goal right as Gyau was about to sub into the game.

Robbie Keane thinks Robbie Rogers should get a look at left back for the USMNT (No Gregory, I am not posting this as a shot at Timmy Chandler. Just wanted to get that out there in advance. ).

MLSsoccer.com posted their Top 24 players under 24 yesterday. A few USMNT players (DeAndre Yedlin, Bill Hamid, Luis Gil) on there as well as some possible USMNT hopefuls in the near future (Gyasi Zardes, Wil Trapp).

It might be tough for some of the MLS players to play for the USMNT in the October 10 friendly due to the MLS schedule that week.

And finally, we are nearly out of our OT/Sacha Mustache t-shirts, but here is your last chance to get your hands on one. Some of the ones listed in that post have already been claimed, waiting to hear back from some others, but send me an e-mail if you are interested.

At the youth level, Gedion Zelalem went 90 minutes for Arsenal’s U-21 team in a 1-1 draw. Also at the U-21 level, Cody Cropper and Southampton defeated Sebastian Lletget and West Ham 2-1. Here are some highlights with Lletget getting an assist at the 3:22 mark. And Marc Pelosi has come back from his broken leg and started to play again with Liverpool’s U-21 team.

After a few weeks of speculation, DeAndre Yedlin’s transfer to Tottenham has become official. He will spend the rest of the MLS season with Seattle before joining up with Tottenham for the 2015-16 season. There is some confusion on what will happen to him between the end of the MLS season and 2015-16 as that is a lot of time (and you would figure that he would be in the USMNT’s plans for the 2015 Gold Cup).

San Jose Earthquakes goalkeeper David Bingham has been loaned out to Norwegian Adeccoligaen (second tier) side Strømmen.

US U-20 forward Andrija Novakovich scored three goals against AFC Wimbledon in U-21 action over the weekend (highlights).

Some new Americans in Europe. Connor Brehm has signed with Carrick Rangers and has been loaned out to PSNI. Both teams play in the Northern Ireland Football League Championship 1. And goalkeeper Ryan Onwukwe is joining German sixth division club FCA Darmstadt. Thanks to @WisconsinSoccer for the heads up.